Dybbuk
Dybbuk In Jewish folklore and popular belief an evil spirit which enters into a living person, cleaves to his soul, causes mental illness, talks through his mouth, and represents a separate and alien personality is called a dibbuk. The term appears neither in talmudic literature nor in the Kabbalah, where this phenomenon is always called "evil spirit." The name of '''origin In the 17th century, the term was introduced into literature only from the spoken language of German and Polish Jews. It is an abstract of dibbuk me-ru'aḥ ra'ah ("a cleavage of an evil spirit"), or dibbuk min ḥa-hiẓonim ("dibbuk from the outside"), which is found in man. The act of attachment of the spirit to the body became the name of the spirit itself. However, the verb davok ("split") is found throughout cabalistic literature where it denotes the relations between the evil spirit and the body, mitdabbeket bo ("it splits itself to him"). History Stories about dibbukim(plural) are common in the time of the Second Temple and the talmudic periods, particularly in fact; they are not as outstanding in medieval literature. At first, the dibbuk was considered to be a devil or a demon which entered the body of a sick person. Later, an explanation common among other peoples was added, namely that some of the dibbukim are the spirits of dead persons who were not laid to rest and became demons. In The 16th century, this idea (also common in medieval Christianity) combined with the principle of gilgul '''("transmigration of the soul") and became widespread and accepted by large division of the Jewish population, together with the belief in dibbukim. They were generally considered to be souls which, on account of the horror of their sins, were not even allowed to transmigrate and as "denuded spirits" they sought refuge in the bodies of living persons. The entry of a dibbuk into a person was a sign of his having committed a secret sin which opened a door for the dibbuk. '''Exorcism The spiritualism literature of *Luria's disciples contains many stories and "protocols" about the exorcism of dibbukim. Numerous manuscripts present detailed instructions on how to exorcise them. The power to exorcise dibbukim was given to accomplished Ḥasidim. They exorcised the dibbuk from the body which was bound by it and at the time redeemed the soul by providing a tikkun ("restoration") for him, either by transmigration or by causing the dibbuk to enter hell. More info ''' From 1560 several detailed reports in Hebrew and Yiddish on the achievement of dibbukim and their testimonies about themselves were preserved and published. A wealth of material on actual stories of dibbukim: · '''Vital's Sha'ar ha-Gilgulim, in Samuel · Vital's Sefer ha-Ḥezyonot, in Ḥayyim · By Manasseh Ben Israel, in Nishmat Ḥayyim (book 3, chs. 10 and 14) · By Elijah ha-Kohen of Smyrna, in Minḥat Eliyahu (chs. 4 and 5) · By Judah Moses Fetya of Baghdad, in Minḥat Yehudah (1933, pp. 41–59) In 1903, the latter exorcised Shabbetai Ẓevi and his prophet, nathan of Gaza who appeared as dibbukim in the bodies of men and women in Baghdad. Special booklets on the exorcisms of famous spirits which took place in Korets have also been published (end of 17th century in Yiddish), in Nikolsburg (1696, 1743), in Detmold (1743), and in Stolowitz (1848). The last protocol of this kind, published in Jerusalem in 1904, concerns a dibbuk which entered the body of a woman and was exorcised by Ben-Zion Ḥazzan. The phenomena connected with the beliefs in and the stories about dibbukim usually have their factual background in cases of madness and sometimes even in demonstration of 'schizophrenia '(emotional disorder).